The reason? My right to vote was earned – by the shed blood of thousands of people before me who agreed that a government of the people, by the people and for the people was something worth dying for. When people give up their lives so that I might have the right to vote, I ought to take that seriously.

In a government of, by and for the people, every branch of government – the executive, the legislative, and the judicial – is accountable to the people. Right?

Not exactly. The decision on who serves in one branch of our government – the judicial branch – is being made almost entirely by a small group of individuals. These select attorneys and politicians appoint judges who agree with their politics – and these selected judges are accountable to no one.

What’s more, these appointments aren’t for a few years, but for life. Federal district court judges, appellate court judges, Supreme Court justices, state Supreme Court justices all are appointed for life – appointed by a tiny group of ruling elites who are accountable to no one for the appointments they make.

The only area of the judicial branch that remains accountable to the people are the Superior Courts. You and I still get to vote for them. But even that tiny speck of accountability has been distorted and hidden better than a ball in a shell game.

Here’s how it works. Most Superior Court judges are initially appointed to fill a vacancy until the next election. Should a seated judge be challenged by another candidate, that challenger takes a huge career risk. Losing a race against a seated judge virtually ensures that attorney will never again receive an impartial decision by any judge anywhere, simply because that attorney had the audacity to run against a seated judge. With such a career risk, almost no one ever dares to run. So the appointees become, for all intents and purposes, lifetime judges.

This is the motivation behind creating Better Courts Now. Better Courts Now is simply a group of ordinary citizens, like you and me, rising up to preserve democracy.

And no, that is not an overstatement; any attempt to diminish the right of the people to elect their government officials is an attack on democracy itself. Better Courts Now is the vehicle by which “We the People” bring some accountability back to the court system. Better Courts Now is the way you and I can receive enlightened information when we cast our vote for judges.

Yet for some reason, the notion of ordinary citizens working together to inform our neighbors about the candidates running for Superior Court judge is alarming to some people. They are saying Better Courts Now is a threat to the judicial system.

A threat? A website put up by citizens to share information about an election? What are they afraid of?